


don't dream it's over

by bevioletskies



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 15:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14500038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bevioletskies/pseuds/bevioletskies
Summary: “Hello?” he called. His voice was raspy from disuse, something Peter had admittedly never experienced before. The very idea of going so long without talking made him think he’d been passed out for longer than it seemed. “Hello, what is this? Where am I?”“Hello.”A little girl’s voice called out to him from somewhere behind him. He wrinkled his brow in confusion, slowly turning to face her. He could see a silhouette in the distance, though he couldn’t quite make out her face or her clothes from here. She appeared to be wearing a long, oversized jacket, her hair tied back into two braided twists.“Are you - are you lost?” Peter squinted in an attempt to see her. His legs were numb; he couldn’t possibly get any closer right now, as much as he wanted to. “What’s happening?”She let out a soft, musical laugh, though she sounded a little saddened, too. “I think you’re more lost than I am, Peter.”





	don't dream it's over

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know if I’m the first to write something like this, but I very much doubt I’ll be the last, so my apologies if this is similar to other fic that happens to be out there already. **MAJOR** spoiler warning for _Avengers: Infinity War_ , please don’t let me spoil it for you if you haven’t seen it yet!
> 
> Fic title is from the song [Don't Dream It's Over](https://open.spotify.com/track/7G7tgVYORlDuVprcYHuFJh?si=BPfnpLeaSmqrsn5Z3djiSg) by Crowded House.

Peter came to with a strangled cry, gasping desperately for air as he clutched at his chest. His arms and legs felt like jelly in his attempts to push himself into a sitting position, wobbling beneath him with all the strength of a newborn child. It took him a full minute to recover from whatever it was that had just happened - what _had_ just happened? - his breath beginning to slow, his racing heart pounding against his chest a little slower with every exhale.

He wasn’t exactly sure how to describe the sensation in his body, only that it didn’t quite feel like his own. He felt as if he weighed like nothing, and yet like something was pulling him into the ground, threatening to swallow him up. Was it the gravity? Where was he? Where was he _before_? He glanced down at his hands, first noting the lack of calluses and blisters on his fingers from handling his blasters for hours at a time, then realizing he was lying on water, only that wasn’t quite right either, was it?

No, the surface beneath him wasn’t quite water; it was too solid, too sure of itself for that. Only it moved like water, but not like any water he’d seen. It wasn’t translucent nor opaque, shifting like a rippling, sunset-colored tide. And all around him, a seemingly endless void of orange sky, except there was no breeze. Was he outside? Was he trapped somewhere else? His breath started to pick up again, this time in anxiety, huffing softly as he patted his hips for his weapons, only to find he wasn’t carrying any.

“Hello?” he called. His voice was raspy from disuse, something Peter had admittedly never experienced before. The very idea of going so long without talking made him think he’d been passed out for longer than it seemed. “Hello, what is this? Where am I?”

“Hello.”

A little girl’s voice called out to him from somewhere behind him. He wrinkled his brow in confusion, slowly turning to face her. He could see a silhouette in the distance, though he couldn’t quite make out her face or her clothes from here. She appeared to be wearing a long, oversized jacket, her hair tied back into two braided twists.

“Are you - are you lost?” Peter squinted in an attempt to see her. His legs were numb; he couldn’t possibly get any closer right now, as much as he wanted to. “What’s happening?”

She let out a soft, musical laugh, though she sounded a little saddened, too. “I think you’re more lost than I am, Peter.”

“You know me.” Peter struggled once more to at least get himself upright. No matter where he looked, it was nothing but an ominous orange glow, save for the dark figure in the distance. She took a few steps towards him, her face still obscured with what seemed to be artificial darkness that followed her every move.

“Yes. And you know me too, though maybe not like this.” The little girl emerged from the shadows. Peter could only stare at her, stunned. She had green skin, noticeably untouched by metal, large dark eyes and long lashes, and dark red hair. Her jacket was a mix of soft brown and red leather; her boots, too. It was unmistakably Gamora, no older than perhaps six years old.

“I - you - what - where, where am I?” he breathed.

“So he did it.” Gamora hung her head, her eyes squeezing shut for a moment. “I was hoping he lied.”

The memories came flooding back to Peter then, overwhelming him, his temples throbbing in sudden emotional turmoil. “Yeah, he...he got all the Infinity Stones. Seriously, where are we? Are you...are you really _you_ , Gamora?”

“Would you prefer to see me as you remember me?” Suddenly, the little girl vanished in thin air, only to be replaced by her older self, looking exactly as she had the moment Thanos took her, right down to the cut she’d acquired across her palm in her attempt to stab him. Gamora stood over Peter, who was now kneeling, sat on his haunches as if in prayer. There was a streak of tears down her cheeks, which hadn’t shown on her child form.

He swallowed, not quite able to keep the lump in his throat down. “No, I...not right now. I don’t think I can face you. The ‘you’ that I know.”

She nodded in understanding, vanishing and reappearing as her young self once more. “I think...this is the Soul Dimension. A place in which people trade a life for a life.”

“Half the universe,” Peter whispered, mostly to himself. He turned away from her, unable to meet her inquisitive gaze anymore. Her childlike innocence was there, but there was something about her eyes that carried the weight of everything that Gamora had ever seen and done over the entire span of her life. “So am I...are _we_...dead?”

“Yes and no.” She sat cross-legged before him, as if she expected to be here a while. Peter wasn’t sure how to interpret it, if he could handle this young, yet world-weary Gamora as his only company for the rest of his infinite purgatory. “I only knew where the Soul Stone was, but not every detail of how it worked. If I did, I...I wouldn’t have been so sure of myself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told Thanos where it was because he was hurting Nebula. He opened her up right in front of me like she was…” Gamora inhaled sharply to stop herself from crying out. Peter found it utterly disturbing to see such a broken expression on such a young child, only he could remember it on himself, years ago, when his mother first told him she was dying. “He loved me. It was the only way he could get the Soul Stone. Except...that’s not love. It wasn’t love.” She looked up at him, her eyes glossy with unshed tears. “Who else, Peter? Who did we lose?”

“I...I haven’t seen Rocket and Groot since they left with Thor. But I had...I had to watch Mantis and Drax disappear, just like, well.” He held up his hand, snapping his fingers half-heartedly. Such an innocent motion, made ominous by a man who had made a mess of them all. “We had other allies too...those ‘Avengers’ that Thor told us about. I don’t know what happened to them. I don’t...I can’t…”

“Peter.” Despite her youth, Gamora still looked at him like she knew exactly what he was thinking. “You’re hiding something.”

“What makes you think - ”

“ _Peter_ ,” she repeated. Her hand was outstretched between them, the tips of her short little fingers nearly grazing his knees.

Sighing, it was now Peter’s turn to hang his head in shame. “I already lost my mom. I lost Yondu. How was I s’posed to think straight when I lost you, too?” He looked up at her, tears streaking down his face. “We had him pinned down. Me, Drax, Mantis, the Avengers, we had him under. And I asked him where you were. And...Nebula figured it out before I did.”

“You became angry,” Gamora guessed. “And you blame yourself.”

“Yeah, who wouldn’t? If I’d just held it in for another damn second - ”

“It wouldn’t be in your nature.” Gamora smiled bitterly at him. “So we both made mistakes. We can’t be the only ones.”

“The wizard guy gave up the Time Stone,” Peter offered, sniffling. At Gamora’s perplexed expression, he shook his head. “Don’t ask. It was weird.”

They fell silent for a moment, mulling over everything that had been said and everything that went unspoken. Peter finally managed to look at her, to see the full picture of what Gamora had been like as a child. Obviously, this version of her possessed the memory of her adult self, so her speech was more advanced than it would have actually been, but her face was strikingly similar, her expressions eerily alike. He wanted to ask her for forgiveness all of a sudden, only he wasn’t sure for what, and he wasn’t sure how.

“So what happens next? Am I stuck here forever?” he asked after some time had passed.

“I don’t know.” She sounded so small then, like the child she appeared to be. “I haven’t been here for very long. I saw Thanos a little while ago. I think I appear to people who want to see me.”

“Maybe you’ll get to see the other Guardians,” Peter said quietly, smiling half-heartedly. “I wish I could. I wish I knew how this place worked. I wish...I wish I could get out of here.” He let out a sudden snarl under his breath, something feral and angry and _raw_. “I’m gonna make up for what I did, Gamora. I failed you. I failed everyone. Maybe I don’t deserve to leave this place, but I’m gonna damn well try.”

Gamora got to her feet, and for a moment, Peter worried that she was going to leave him behind, leave him utterly alone in this hellscape of a dimension that burned his retinas and weighed heavy on his heart. She vanished, then reappeared once more as her older self, only this time she didn’t look the way she did when she’d been taken. Instead, she was barefoot, her hair pulled back into a low ponytail, wearing one of Peter’s T-shirts and a pair of cotton leggings. It was what she had worn to bed, _their_ bed, on their last night.

She knelt back down beside him. “I’ve learned many things during these last four years as a Guardian,” Gamora murmured. “Everything that Thanos had me do...and the things I carried out of my own volition, independent of his orders, as much as I told myself they were his doing...they were the worst parts of me. I hated myself. I hated who I was when I was with him, and I hated how I had let myself become that person. The Orb became my chance out of there, the first step of many to freedom. I believed redemption would be a long and impossible journey. But the more time I spent with the Guardians, I began to believe something else.”

“What’s that?” Peter wanted to reach out to her, to steady her trembling hands, to dry the tears from her eyes that were yet to fall.

“We are not defined by our mistakes. We are defined by our choices.” Gamora gave him a watery smile. She lifted a hand to his head, running her fingers through his hair. “You get so lost in your own head sometimes, Peter. As do I, as do we all. But I don’t think is the end for either of us.”

“There must be someone left,” Peter said, brightening just the slightest. “The doctor, he said...fourteen million futures, and we win in one of them. Maybe this is the one. The people that made it, they’ve gotta be doin’ _something_ about it now, right?”

“And then they can bring us back,” Gamora nodded, her smile widening. “That may be a little optimistic, but...it’s possible.”

“When I was a kid, I used to believe I was invincible.” Peter chuckled self-deprecatingly, tracing nonsensical patterns in the water beneath them. “I think I’ve lost too much to believe that anymore.”

“You were right, in a way,” Gamora shrugged, withdrawing her hand. “Just maybe not in the way you expected.”

“If I still had my Celestial powers, I could _really_ kick some ass,” Peter sighed wistfully. “But if I did...then it’d be _my_ dad trying to wipe out the universe instead of yours. Man, families suck sometimes.”

“Not ours. Not the one we chose for ourselves,” Gamora smiled. “ _That_ is love, Peter. Not whatever it is that Thanos felt for me, regardless of the fact that the Soul Stone accepted it for what it was. What I feel for you, for the other Guardians.” She swallowed. “For my sister.”

“I think Nebula made it,” Peter said reassuringly, finally taking her hand for the first time since he’d arrived here. He could feel its weight, but not its warmth. Their entire environment was devoid of temperature, of feeling beyond mere existence. It terrified him. “She’ll be okay. She’ll come for you.”

“I hope she did. And I hope she does.” Gamora squeezed his hand in return, though once again, he could only feel a faint pressure. “We aren’t done. We have to defeat Thanos. I promised her we would.” Suddenly, she looked upwards into nothing, inhaling loudly. “Peter...someone else is calling for me.”

“Who? Who is it?” Peter said urgently.

She let out a sudden anguished sob. “It’s...it’s Groot. He didn’t survive, either.”

Peter barely had time to react when he felt something of a tug in his chest, like someone had reached into him and wrapped their fingers around his heart. Instinctively, he knew it was Mantis. She was frightened, desperate for a reassuring word from her captain, her surrogate brother. “Mantis is looking for me, too. How does this...how does this work? Will we only see them? Will I see you again?”

“You will. I promise,” Gamora said fiercely, pulling them both to their feet. “Just remember, this isn’t the end for us.”

He cupped her jaw. He knew Mantis needed him, but he wasn’t ready to let go of Gamora. Then again, he never would be. “Okay. Okay, I just gotta believe this is the _one_ future. The one we need.”

“Yes, exactly.” Gamora’s hands came to rest against his chest, blinking up at him with gentle eyes. “And I love you. More than anything.”

“I love you, too.” Peter was beginning to get choked up again. All he could do was wrap his arms around her waist and pull her in tight, burying his face into her neck. If he imagined it hard enough, he could smell her shampoo, could feel the softness of her hair and skin. “You _are_ my everything.”

Gamora laughed, wetness trailing down her cheekbones onto Peter’s face. “I’ll see you soon, Peter Quill.”

And just like that, Peter found himself stirring once again, this time a little less disoriented than before. It took him a moment to realize she was no longer in his arms, and for a second, his heart pulsed with anger, guilt, desperation, everything he’d been feeling in the last whirlwind hours of his too-short life. But then, in the distance, he saw the outline of a young woman stumbling to her feet, the antennae on her forehead intermittently glowing and sparking like a blown fuse trying to come back to life.

Peter smiled to himself, a little sadly, a little hopefully, and called out once more. “Hello?”

**Author's Note:**

> I’m working on a longer post- _Infinity War_ one-shot that I’ll hopefully be posting soon, but I had to write this one out of my mind first, because oh boy, that movie was an _experience_. Also note that I’m unfamiliar with how the Soul Stone works in the comics, this is just purely based off that last scene with Thanos talking to young Gamora. You can also read this fic on [Tumblr](http://bevioletskies.tumblr.com/post/173486164779/dont-dream-its-over) if you would like!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, comments and kudos would be much appreciated, and I hope you enjoyed this quick angst-fest of mine!


End file.
